Lynne Sachs Turns Business Cards Into a Detective Film

A box of hundreds of business cards became the starting point for Lynne Sachs's newest film, "Every Contact Leaves a Trace." The U.S. artist and documentarian showed the film in its Czech premiere at the Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival.

She also serves on the festival's First Lights jury, which evaluates documentary debuts. Sachs has screened earlier films at Ji.hlava before, but this is her first visit in person. She said she has been impressed by Ji.hlava films that span the globe and show a wide range of filmmaking approaches and perspectives.

"There are about 24 movies to see," Sachs said. "It's kind of revelatory. Already I've seen two films here, one from Argentina and one from Congo and they really couldn't be more different. They make you think about the documentary paradigm."

Sachs appears on camera throughout the film, following names on cards she has kept for decades. She reads through the archive, makes calls, and sometimes asks a youthful niece and nephew for help, with her own connections, doubts and hesitations visible to the audience. Some cards have lost all meaning to her, yet she has preserved hundreds of them carefully in a single box.

Forensic investigators contribute their analyses as Sachs follows leads. "I actually hired a detective at one point," she said. Sachs said: "I'm trying to reconstruct a life story of life experience from the interactions I've had with people…people who left a mark."

What does hiring a detective change for the film?

It puts the filmmaker inside the story. The detective's forensic work and Sachs's own inquiries sit side by side, and her visible uncertainty becomes part of the record she examines. "I was most drawn to the cards that presented the biggest obstacles," she said.

It also changes what participants can expect. Sachs tracks down people who once met her and never expected her at the door with a camera. Sachs said she has not always made that role so clear onscreen.

"Positionality," she said of the question running through the film: whose perspective is the audience seeing, and whether the filmmaker's role stays visible or known.

Her vocabulary carries the same caution. Rather than say "protagonists" or "characters," Sachs prefers "on camera participants," or "visible collaborators who are the people in front of the camera."

"We're offered the chance to tell our story by the person behind the camera," she said. "What I don't know is, who is the person behind the camera?"

The cards, and the people they name

One card came from an artist whose work touched her years ago. Another came from a fellow artist filmmaker later canceled over allegations of impropriety. A third came from a Syrian woman whose family discouraged her from sitting for an on-camera account of her experiences as a refugee. Sachs filmed a tribute to the woman's cooking instead.

Since the film came out, people have offered Sachs their own collections of old business cards. "I say, 'Oh, no!' This combination of cards only goes back to one person. You're the person who had that dentist. You're the person who met that psychoanalyst. Or potential friend on a bus."

The obstacle is not always distance. Sachs said she discovered that she did not need to fly across time zones to reach someone she once knew. That person might not remember her, or feel the encounter mattered. Some card donors may now be impossible to find, she said.

Her family offers a harder account of memory. One relative suggests that people do not choose which memories remain and which disappear. "I don't need to prove I did or didn't," Sachs said. "I need to deal with the residue."

For documentarians weighing how much of themselves to show, "Every Contact Leaves a Trace" offers a test case: keep the maker in frame, and accept that the residue may outlast the proof.